


as we touched and burned

by starvels (dinosaur)



Series: Cap-IM Bingo [7]
Category: Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefighters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Community: cap_ironman, Developing Relationship, Fire Powers, M/M, Press and Tabloids, Relationship Negotiation, Stony Bingo 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 09:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12251700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/starvels
Summary: Tony is a pyrokinetic, Steve is a firefighter and their love is a house on fire.





	as we touched and burned

**Author's Note:**

> for my bingo square pic of steve carrying drunk classique tony out of his symbolic and actual fire. 
> 
> title from [_fires_ by these your children](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn3F4JY4lgo)

 

 

 

 

“What do you want?” Tony asks, sometime around his third coughing fit.

What Steve really wants is for Tony to stop setting fire to buildings when Steve's not the one on duty, but he suspects the chief might not take that statement too kindly.

"Please stop watching horror films before bed," Steve says, instead.

"Absolutely," Tony wheezes into the oxygen mask.

"I think you thought the armoire was a person," Steve says, "That's where the fire originated."

"Dangerous things, those armoires," Steve thinks Tony says.

 _Something's_ dangerous around here, but it’s definitely not the furniture.

"Please be careful, Mr. Stark."

"Oh, definitely," Tony agrees.

Steve sighs and touches Tony's ashy shoulder just once before he removes himself from the scene. He's not supposed to be here in the first place. The chief is eyeing him from the other side of the scene. He’s got maybe 3 minutes before Fury stomps over and kicks him off with his own boot.

Steve's always struggled with what he's supposed to do versus what he feels he has to do, though.

"Stay on the oxygen," he tells Tony, quietly, instead.

"Go back to sleep," Tony pulls down the mask to say, red-red eyes flickering up at him.

Steve controls his breathing, "I wasn't asleep," he lies.

"Neither was I," Tony says, face twisting dour. “And you’re not in gear.”

Steve touches his chin as gently as he can. There's a red scrape all down the side of Tony's neck. It can't be from the fire, but maybe it's from waking up in it. The scratch looks irritated, like infection setting in.

"I'm not on duty," Steve says automatically before he can think twice and then exhales hard when Tony smirks in victory.

They stay like that for a moment, Steve half-heartedly glaring and Tony basking, bright and dangerous in the night.

"Get someone to check you out," Steve says finally, tapping at the underside of Tony's chin before letting him go. He doesn't see any more injuries, but that doesn't mean Tony doesn't have them and isn't just playing it off like usual.

"Already have, darling," Tony says softly, leaning to press his cheek against Steve's fingers before he draws back, eyes roaming over Steve's sleep rumbled joggers and NYFD tee like the softness of them makes him feel better.

A twist of pleasure happens somewhere in Steve's stomach.

Steve holds Tony's eyes as he reaches for the oxygen mask, letting his nails run along the sharp line of Tony's scruff jaw. Tony's eyes flutter and the pleasure twists higher. The mask settles back onto Tony's face under Steve's hands, making him look small and in need of a hug again.

"For me," Steve says, voice hoarse. "Have a medic look you over for injuries, yeah?"

Tony's eyes focus on his.

After one long moment, colored only by the shadows of the flames and the sound of the fire crew, Tony nods. Just barely, but there. His word.

Steve touches Tony’s cheek one last time.

Then he goes home to lay awake in his cold bed.

He thinks about the way Tony’s body curled in on itself when he was alone, in the remains of his fire. He thinks about the way Tony’s body opened toward Steve when Steve touched him, despite the fire.

He draws the shape of Tony’s spine with his fingers across the sheets.

 

\--

 

The first time Steve saves Tony, he doesn't know - who he is or what he can do.

He just knows the job, the search, the heat, the rescue, the crackle of his shot comm, the sharp horror of the civilian he’s carrying reaching out for the flames while still seeming unconscious.

"No," He shouts, jerking them both away, hoisting the civilian from his shoulder into his arms, but it's too late, the flame is licking upwards, winding snakelike around the civilian's arms.

Steve is covering them, using his own flame retardant gear to try and douse the flames, but it's not working. He can't understand - without an accelerant right there, there's no way these flames should be building, the heat coming off of them is ridiculous. He thinks his gloves might be cracking. Still, he tries to pat the civilian down, tries to move them out of the path of the flames. They need to get to less saturated air.

He steps wrong in the doorway to the hall, teeters and the bundle in his arms jolts.

And then, just as suddenly, the fire near them is gone, snapped back like a misbehaving rubber band. It slinks backwards impossibly, seemingly _sent_ to the far reaches of the room. A quiet pop follows, the change in air pressure enough to tap Steve's ear drums.

"What the hell," he says, pausing for one too-long second before he thumps his way faster across the hallway, back towards the exit.

"Yea," a voice slurs, too loud, "Wh'fuck."

Steve glances down to the bundle in his arms.

The civilian is awake.

“Hold on,” Steve says gruffly, trying to seem in control and not completely fucking confused and stressed. “You’re safe. The medics are close.”

It’s got to be painful. The civilian’s got to be burned. Arms and legs, at the absolute least. It sends a rock of despair down Steve’s stomach, even as he rushes them down the hall.

“’Kay,” the bundle murmurs.

Unbothered. Unpained.

“What the hell,” Steve mutters again.

He bursts through the exit onto a rickety metal stairwell, four floors up.

This wasn’t the exit they’d cleared for evac but, it hardly matters now. Steve hoists his burden higher and carefully takes the stairs down, stepping over a particularly rusted one and feeling the swoop harder than he normally would.

“Weee,” the ridiculous voice says.

“You’re in high spirits,” Steve can’t help saying. _For someone third-degree burned in an abandoned brownstone in the rough part of town._

A grunt, something like a shoulder shrug. The blue of the civilian’s eyes is almost electric in the soot of the scene. Surprisingly conscious. Not necessarily a good sign, if the burns are bad enough there’s no feeling. The eyes focus on something above Steve as they come around the last bend of the stairwell, heat tempering through the brick of the building.

Steve glances up and stutters to a stop. The entirety of the flames licking through the windows of the building are withering, biting back and curling sharply into nothingness. The heat slices impossibly to cold dusk in a second.

The world seems to echo with silence for a moment.

“Pyrokinetic,” Steve says, flat and shocked.

The civilian’s too long eyelashes flutter shut, in something finally like pain.

“Yes,” they say. Then, quieter, “I’m sorry.”

 

\--

 

Steve finds out how it works in snapshots.

The day they show up and Tony is covered in white-blue flame that won’t douse and he’s naked and star-gazing as he recites Dylan Thomas poetry.

The day there’s a high-rise fire on 34th and Steve pulls off his helmet to gasp air and down water and watches Tony step out of a police-escorted car to walk into the burning building and turn it into a smoking hope.                                                                                  

The day he catches the tail end of a house fire and finds Tony tucked away in an ambulance, clinging to an oxygen mask, shrugging his bare, unblemished body at Steve’s wide-eyed look.

The day Steve literally runs headlong into Tony coming out of an overpriced coffee shop in the financial district and coffee spills across their t-shirts and Tony yelps and looks up and freezes.

They share a too-cold metal table and a handful of napkins.

“So,” Tony says, at length, “Have you read up on me, finally?”

“No,” Steve says, gathering napkins into a leaning tower of paper.

Tony raises one eyebrow, but Steve’s more interested in the white-knuckled clench of his hands on the table, the way hope coils through Tony’s body like poison.

“There’s a lot of information out there about me,” Tony says, pointed as a _why not?_

Steve’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “I make my own reports.”

Tony swallows.

He seems shaky in a way that isn’t about caffeine withdrawal from a spilt coffee.

It’s been three days since Steve slept all the way through the night and he was craving coffee more as a justification for his own tremors, than want of the taste. Sure, he could buy another one, but sometimes it feels too much effort just to redo things when they’ve gone to shit.

Steve figures Tony gets that. They’re both still sitting here shaking, empty-handed and blank-eyed, afterall.

“I’ve. I went to the hospital today.”

Steve holds Tony’s eyes.

“There was a car accident on 78.”

“It was bad,” Steve agrees.

Tony’s knuckles go red for a moment.

“They didn’t –”

He cuts himself off, curling over the table.

For a long moment, Steve rolls the silence over his tongue, picks through this image of a scarred man in front of him, not managing to talk about a gas line leak that caught three minivans on the highway as if it was a spark from his own nightmare that burst onto the scene.

“You didn’t do that,” Steve says, because he’s never seen Tony in the same hour as another civilian, on a call out, let alone at the same scene.

Though, a moment, a flicker of a thought chases him, that maybe Tony does have the ability, to breathe life, to stoke a fire across a city. How else does Steve explain this strange heat between them.

A shudder. A long moment where they just watch each other.

And Tony nods and finally leans into Steve’s side and for the first time Steve touches Tony without either of them being covered in ashes.

It’s frightening, how much still, he wants it to mean.

 

\--

 

A fire is apathetic.

A fire breathes and fights and holds course and changes fate with a flick of an ember. A fire is science and probability and crossroad pleas and tragic irony.

Fire has no steady hand and no temper to temper.

It’s faster than a viper and more steady than a lion. It eats and eats and eats like space swallows suns.

There’s little Steve can do in the face of such vastness. He’s made a weary peace with the reality of his job. He saves lives when he can. He watches people die when he can’t. He respects the potential of horror inside a single match laid wrong. He has a minute amount of control against a force of nature, a narrow window of coexistence and he pushes, pushes, pushes, and still sometimes doesn’t win.

But. There’s some he can do.

He holds to that.

There’s less he can do in the face of Tony Stark, pyrokinetic, waking up with one arm in the hand of a medic and reaching out, uncoordinated with the other to flick a hand at a wall of fire two stories high and it obediently culling itself to coal.

What would have taken his crew 4 hours takes Tony less than half a breath.

Looking at Tony from behind his helmet, Steve gets the same feeling he does the moment he jumps down from the truck to meet a blaze head one.

There’s not a good way to say to a burgeoning friend, _You make me feel useless_ , so Steve says nothing.

Tony watches him back anyway, eye drifting shut as the heat trails to cold night.

Later, Tony talks to him on the street anyway, a dripping hot dog in one hand and the other tucked in his pocket.

Steve can’t help talking back, anyway.

God, he wishes he knew how to give up.

God, he wishes he didn’t take the pent up frustration out on Tony 2 weeks later, shouting at him in front of a queue of reporters at some firefighter gala Steve didn’t even want an invitation to in the first place.

Tony is sharp to the point of brittle, “Well, Captain, tell us all how you really feel, now.”

“You don’t wanna know how I really feel,” Steve bites back.

Lazily eyeing the reporters like he’s center stage for a monologue, Tony is a practiced thespian.

“Don’t I?” Tony asks, quieter.

“D –” Steve bites his own tongue. “Don’t,” he says, just as quiet.

Longing pulls at his fingertips. Tony’s cheeks look so defined tonight, his hair so soft in its curls.

“Don’t _you_ want to know how _I_ really feel?” Tony smiles, that awful, wax smile dripping pain.

No. Steve doesn’t. Steve shouldn’t.

 _I do. I wish I knew what saving you was going to do to me_ , Steve thinks for one horrible, self-aware moment, before he closes his eyes. _I wish I knew how not to save you._

_I wish you didn’t need saving._

Backs down.

Leaves the scene.

Makes Tony deal with the cleanup.

 

\--

 

“Well, that was a fun one,” Tony rasps out, the day he flash-burns an entire townhouse.

It’s the fourth time they’ve seen each other professionally since the coffeeshop, the second time since the gala, the sixth time total. And every time, Tony has been prickly, sharply intense, determined to prove _something_.

"There's something wrong with you," Steve bites out.

"More than one thing," Tony looks almost relieved to tell Steve, like he's glad Steve will finally realize how shitty he’s been this entire time, how terrible a person.

Like that’s what he’s been trying to prove.

Tony’s not supposed to accept what Steve throws at him. He’s supposed to cut back, to turn that sickly, sharp smile on Steve. He’s supposed to take Steve’s feet out from under him, he's supposed to be fine goldware, built molten and heat resistant.

Like a booster hose turned on his face, Steve’s rage cools.

 He lets Tony sit for a second. He breathes out.

"It's be a lot easier to fight with you," Steve says quietly, "If you'd not just believe every shitty thing everyone says."

Stupid, lovely, honorable man.

Tony shrugs, “I don’t. Not the stupid things.”

"And what are these then?"

“Facts.”

Steve stares at him.

"Individually replicable results from a random sampling of independently substantiated sources," Tony continues.

Steve stares at him some more.

“For someone who knows so much about science,” Steve says slowly, watching the twisted lines of Tony’s shoulders. “You know jack shit about people. About yourself.”

Tony flinches.

For one drawn out moment, they sit there, dust covered and prickly with tiredness. Steve watches the reporters swarm the police line and knows that his body and the angle of the ambulance is the only thing shielding Tony from their cameras. He knows soon they will try to creep around the tape, try to immortalize this worn and bruised Tony so they can clamor over it on the 5 o’clock TMZ run.

It isn’t Steve’s business.

He doesn’t want attention. He’s never been the department’s PR figure and he’s never wanted to be. Rejected the position.

But.

But Steve shouted at Tony in front of the press line when it wasn’t him Steve was mad at.

But Tony reaches for Steve when he gets pulled out of fires. He reaches even when he’s unconscious and reaching means fire for fingers.

“I’m off at 8,” Steve says, heaving a deep breath, “Waffles?”

Tony stares up at him.

Steve meets his eyes, steady.

“Donuts,” he says eventually.

“Donuts,” Steve agrees.

He doesn’t kiss Tony then.

He does that later, when Tony’s plum-shaped sunglasses have slipped down his nose and Steve’s gone through an entire dozen Bavarian cremes. Tony tastes like strawberry. Sugary sweet and sharp, soft with the crème still on Steve’s tongue.

“Goes well together,” Steve murmurs, thumb pressed to Tony’s slick bottom lip.

“We could leave well together, too,” Tony murmurs back, breath ghosting against Steve’s finger.

“Alright,” Steve drawls back.

And kisses him some more.

 

\--

 

Their blistering tension still lingers, though.

The first week of their tentative, We’re Banging and Hanging Now relationship shift, it’s little things.

Steve hates the way Tony wears sunglasses indoors all the time, but he can’t figure out if it’s because what it implies about the media hounds and Tony, or because it means he can’t read Tony’s expression – his revealing eyes.

Tony hates the way Steve doesn’t decorate his apartment, keeps his dog tags out on his dresser like a reminder and his photos away in a shoebox like memoriam, but doesn’t say whether it’s because Tony doesn’t have those things, or he wishes Steve still did.  

As time goes on, the things get smaller, but it always seems like more than Steve remembers. 

They both hate squid, but Tony will down anything fruity and horrifically blended and Steve avoids the entire banana aisle in the grocery store like 14th century Europe.

Tony’s a disgustingly cheerful morning coffee-mug of a person. Steve’s only remotely polite company after waking post-shift at 2PM.

Tony plays people like peeled open accordions and Steve buttons his shirts to the collar. 

It’s just 20 little things, one after another and.

And Tony just won’t stop _touching things._

“How the hell can you be cold, carrying around all that? Turn it the fuck down, Rogers,” Tony rolls his eyes, already flicking the AC to 65.

And Steve, who is still fresh from another nightmare about being 16 and living weeks in Brooklyn winters without so much as a gas flame, can’t resist biting out something useless like, “Not everyone is an avid apartment burning hothead, _Stark_.”

And well, Tony says something like “Fuck yourself tonight, then,” and slams the front door.

And then Steve doesn’t see Tony for 3 weeks until Tony sparks a small but brutal fire when he takes a drunken nap in the park and then Steve is pulling him away from the remains of a stray tom cat.

“Shh, stop, Tony,” Steve says, awkward, but determined, holding onto Tony’s shaking body. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” Tony whispers, choked. “It is.”

“It’s not,” Steve presses a too large glove to the back of Tony’s head.

For one second he imagines he can keep the man in his arms from crumbling apart, if he can just cover them both in his jacket. 

And the truth is, there’s a lot of things Steve can’t resist doing around Tony.

Tony is still murmuring “It is,” when Steve guides him off scene.

He doesn’t let go of Steve’s jacket.

 

\--

 

The sex leaves bruises across Steve’s body he finds for days after; little souvenirs of places he’s kissed Tony Stark in.

The back of his bicep is the echoing closet at some swank hotel fundraiser Tony is attending. Outside, in the middle of a field in wet New York, 12 miles from one of Tony’s factories, is the side of his hip. Scrunched in the back of Steve’s SUV, are the matching line of scratches along his shoulders. A fingerstamp on his jaw from underneath Tony’s desk. The knicks on his palms; the floor of a windy walkup Tony’s renting.

A map of them across the stretch of Steve’s body and he’s still no closer to deciphering where they are – what they’re walking towards.

The sex is brilliant. It’s hot and exploratory in an unexpectant way and above all, _kind_. Steve never feels left out of his depth against the scope of Tony’s experience and never feels his own past as a hurdle for them to overcome. They say a lot throughout it, murmurings and whispers and exclamations and pointed silences they’re learning to read more and more every day.

It’s half a conversation, Steve thinks, sucking a bruise low on Tony’s collar, digging his teeth in for purchase.

“Up, up, up,” Tony chants against the side of his jaw.

“I gotchu,” Steve murmurs, hands around the soft skin of Tony’s thighs, lifting, curling them closer together.

“Yes,” Tony exhales. “ _Yes, Steve, thank you.”_

 _Thank you_ like Tony’s pleasure is a rare treasure, an unusual gift worthy of gratitude.

Tony’s pulling him close and kissing his eyebrow so, so gently and –

_“Fuck.”_

And then it’s half an argument, Steve thinks, forehead to the sheets, Tony wrapped around him and muttering short, “Here,” “No?” “Alright”s.

Tony’s fingers are coarse, work torn and harsh against the delicate scars of Steve’s wrists

They hold themselves still, the lines of their bodies like fronts on the battlefield, the space between them neutral and un-won. The join of their bodies is too slick and near motionless.

“Tony,” Steve says, louder than he means to, in the quiet afterwards.

“Thanks,” Tony says, evenly, as the stretch of bedsprings and rustle of clothes follows him out the door. There probably ought to be something said there, a _wait_ , a _let’s work through this_ , a _we can be more than this_.

The sex is good, but.

Somedays, Steve is just too tired to talk.  

 

\--

 

 

“You realize we never fight, not really, at these, like we do when we’re not at them?”

The sentence shouldn’t make sense. And yet.

“It has occurred to me,” grunts Steve, sidling them past a crumbling support beam while the chief shouts in his ear about structural integrity.

“Why’d think that is?”

“I don’t wanna discuss our relationship issues in the middle of a residential structure fire,” Steve says, a bit out of breath.

“Right,” Tony says.

Steve pivots around a clutch of burning chairs and Tony makes some vague movement under the blanket. The fire drips back into the walls. Tony’s breathing picks up with stress. He’s got a concussion, but he’s still trying to push back against the flames, off-focused and off-aim. Rubbing his back, Steve shakes his head the next time Tony shifts.

Tony leaves it alone, is quiet untill they reach the crumbled foyer.

“Why not though?”

“ _Tony_.”

He laughs, goatee scratching against the sliver of exposed skin on Steve’s neck like he’s aiming for it. Steve wouldn’t put it past him.

“Maybe we’re just weird,” Steve finds himself saying, later, as the medics are in the midsts of checking the both of them over.

The concussion has been confirmed and Tony is losing more and more focus as they sit in the September night. Talking seems to help him, so.

“Maybe we just don’t know how to do things the right way round,” Steve continues.

Tony mumbles something and the medic crosschecks a glance over at Steve over the IV line they’re drawing.

He refuses to be embarrassed.

“Tony,” he says. “What are you thinking?”

“Iunno,” Tony slurs, “Mayb’ ‘e make ou’ own.”

“Our own what?”

“Righ’ way.”

Steve stares at him around the medic checking his heartrate. It’s not actually a wholly comforting thought. They fight ugly, fierce, like they’re dying and riling up each other is the only way to feel for one last moment. Several times, Steve’s found himself wondering if it’s worth it.

But then, there’s this, there’s Tony refusing, even in his state to be pulled away from Steve, one leg pressed against Steve’s and grabbing at Steve’s hand every other minute like he forgets, then remembers, he wants to hold on.

There’s never been another feeling like holding Tony and knowing that Steve’s the one keeping him safe. Safe from harm, from himself.

It has to be worth it.

 

\--

 

One day, close after their first meeting, Steve asks. He’s just pulled Tony out of what he might have claimed was an abandoned brownstone. If it was one, it was one designed to warehouses look fancy.

“Why . . . ?”

Is there a delicate way to phrase, what’s a billionaire like you doing bumming around burning shit?

"I buy condemned buildings to live in," Tony shrugs, muffled from under the shock blanket and around his coffee mug.

 _Oh,_ Steve thinks.

 _Then you burn them down when you sleep,_ Steve thinks.

_Then you jerk yourself awake from concussions to try and stamp them out. Then you work with emergency services to prevent fires that aren’t even yours. Then you fund affordable housing initiatives in the spots you turned to ash._

_Then you act like it’s no big deal._

"They're nice," Steve offers helplessly. His chest aches.

Tony laughs. "They burn nice."

"Everything burns, if you get the flames hot enough, long enough," Steve says.

Tony's eyes are bright, sharp when they catch Steve's. There’s a line of ash across his cheekbone and it just looks like a charcoal highlight. He licks his lips and Steve has to swallow. "That so?" Tony asks quietly.

 _Would Tony taste like coffee,_ Steve wonders.

_Or would he taste like fire._

“Yeah,” Steve says, quietly.

“So,” Tony drawls, in the voice Steve is coming to recognize means playful, too strong things Steve can’t address because that would mean admitting something, “If all you need is heat –“

“Don’t –” _ruin it_ , Steve starts to say, as Tony curls a smirk.

“You hot enough, Captain?”

Steve rolls his eyes and goes to coordinate with water damage. He’s got a job and entertaining Tony isn’t a part of that. 

No matter how blue his eyes are when he’s delighted. No matter how he shouts appreciation for Steve’s butt across the scene.

And if Steve’s cheeks are flushed, that’s just the remnants of the fire.

 

\--

 

A charity event, a dinner, a handful of cobbled together electric weeks later, Steve is still surprised he can say later. That they have a _later_.

He’s less surprised that Tony makes him commenting on it into an argument.

“We shouldn’t,” Tony starts, stops. His eyes flicker back to the press junket milling around with the guests in the hall.

 _We shouldn’t_ meaning, _we shouldn’t have a later._

The drink Steve’s been holding ¾ths full all night begins to look appealing as more than a prop. Working past Tony’s insecurities is far less preferable than working past Tony’s ego. Steve reaches for Tony’s hand to try and belay them both, to stopgap his anger.

“I don’t care,” Steve grits out.

“Well, you should.” Tony brushes off Steve’s hand and folds himself back into his sunglasses.

“I’ve never been good at doing what I should,” Steve says, too honest by half.

Tony flinches.

“Neither,” Steve says softly, in spite of the tension, “have you, Tony.”

“I – “

The harsh flash of a camera.

And Tony slips away from Steve’s grip; a ghost image on film. Always a blur too fast for Steve to hold.

 

\--

 

Tony comes back.

They talk more. The sex burns at Steve’s eyes.

“People won’t understand.” Tony whispers, into the curve of Steve’s bicep.

Steve rubs his thumb along the scarred curve of Tony’s hip. “I don’t really understand, either.”

A few quiet breaths for each of them. The drapes sway a pattern over their naked bodies.

“Do you?” Steve asks, curious.

By the time Tony answers, Steve has drifted, head leaned down against Tony’s, arm going peacefully numb underneath Tony’s body.

“No,” Tony murmurs, barely audible. “I never have.”

“Don’t need to,” Steve reminds Tony, because he sounds like he needs it. He’s fading into sleep.

The last thing he feels is Tony’s mouth, pressed to the hot bruise of his shoulder like a balm.

He wakes up to an empty bed.

 

\--

 

Fire is boiling.

The building is melting.

Any moment, any moment, Steve thinks, Tony will wake up and this will die to calm coldness.

Any moment.

_Any -_

Steve spends the five weeks Tony’s in the hospital, befriending nurses and bagel shop bakers.

Tony learns to hold Steve’s hand differently with broken knuckles.

Together, they argue quietly and together, they make up loudly.  When Tony leaves, he goes back to Steve’s house, and for the first time, he stays.

 

\--

 

They fight a lot.

They fight in the afterglow, tense dissatisfaction stretched between them like a third, too-familiar lover.

They fight in line at the grocery over pickles.

They fight in front of the paparazzi, taped for the world’s pleasure.

They fight when Steve accepts the promotion in D.C.

They fight when Tony lies about the bottles.

They fight their way back to each other.

 

\--

 

They don’t fight about the fires.

They don’t fight, silhouetted by falling bricks, buried in mortar.

They hold each other, instead.

They hold each other steady.

 

\--

 

Tony sleeps.

Steve keeps watch.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a sort of stylistic challenge, where every section uses repeating layers of language and gets progressively smaller and more to the core, much in the same way a fire burns itself out to ash that carries the hope of regrowth. hopefully, it worked for you <3
> 
> comments, critiques, typo-point outs always appreciated! thanks for reading, doves
> 
> -
> 
> find me [blogging abt tony stark's wardrobe over here.](http://starvels.tumblr.com)  
> &  
> the post for [this fic here.](https://starvels.tumblr.com/post/165987611671/)


End file.
